2 thoughts on “Part II Minute 37 – Unplugged”

Good God I never noticed Marty was playing Power of Love there. It’s so quiet and clumsy I’ve never been able to tell, before. Jeez, now Jennifer’s look of shock and sadness makes more sense. This is the first time she can really associate the newly-unemployed, get-rich-quick dad to her boyfriend. It might be the viewer’s first (only?) moment of pity for Future-Marty, as well. All we’ve felt toward his behavior so far is disgust. But I think a more powerful route this movie could have taken is through disappointment and empathy. You know that line from Inception–how emotions based in positivity are stronger than those rooted in negativity? It’s like that.

If you think about it, we weren’t really disgusted by any character in the first film; even antagonistic ones like Strickland. The most disgust we felt was likely for Biff and his interactions with Lorraine. And somehow that’s different from the disgust we feel for Future-Marty, which distances us from his character and prevents us from becoming invested in him getting a better future. I would much rather feel bad for the protagonist than be repelled by him.

Also, can we please have more live performances on the show because I like.

Also, also, I love the idea that Marty became his deplorable Future-Self because Doc wasn’t in his life. Clearly Hill Valley was not the purest place in ’85. It’s nice to think part of the reason Marty didn’t hang with the wrong crowd, and didn’t get trapped in the rough-town mentality was because he had Doc as a friend and mentor.

The idea of there being a paper tray makes me think of Demolition Man. Remember the scene when Sly goes to the bathroom for the first time, and he’s like, “Dude, you don’t have toilet paper. There’s just these three little shells.” And then when he realizes there’s no such thing as toilet paper anymore, he uses the bad word demerit machine to get some. (I can only say, OW.)

What if Doc was able to read lips, and that’s how he knows what she’s saying? Okay, so reading lips is really difficult in real life, but this is a movie, and that could totally be an explanation.

Doc and Einie are adorable, and if Einstein could talk, he would sound just like Doc, only he would call humans Tall Dogs with Thumbs, and occasionally curse. <3

There's a picture of Christopher Lloyd from high school on his Wikipedia page.

If you want to get into color symbolism, young Marty wears the orange vest, sure, but he also wears a lot of blue because of the denim jacket and the jeans. Old Marty is wearing kind of a mustard and brown combination, and the lightness of his hair makes him look sort of old and sepia-toned, almost like an old photograph. The fact that his guitar is this bright blue is this visual contrast with him, as well as hearkening back to a time when he loved his music, and his younger days when he didn't have to worry about having a job, and providing for a family, and that kind of thing.

In the 1967 version, Marty is blaming someone else for his problems, which we've never seen him do in Part 1, and makes the older him more unlikeable. In the filmed version, he knows it was his own fault, but he wants to protect his mother from worrying about him, and he's also saying out loud, "What am I going to tell Jennifer?"

Old Marty would remember traveling through time, but it's been thirty years since they happened to him. In the Telltale game, Doc mentions specifically that it was fifty years since he was a teenager. I figure that, because time has passed, older Marty still remembers the time travel stuff, but the lasting "omgness" of what happened to him has faded with thirty years of time passing and life happening without Doc in his life.

The idea of Marty without Doc is definitely addressed in the Continuity Conundrum storyline of the comics, and it's so good. Marty is flat-out DEPRESSED five months after Doc and Clara come to pick up Einstein and introduce their sons to Marty and Jennifer. Marty can't let go of all of his time travel experiences, and Jennifer's starting to give up on him because he's stuck on that part of his life and he's not moving on, and that's just in the first comic of the storyline.

But yes, this is a Marty that grew up without a Doc in his life. The question becomes, when Doc came to 2015, did he actually talk to Marty and get to know him as a 47yo, or did he just sort of stalk Marty and realize that his life was shit, and when he realized that Marty's life was going to get worse because of his kids, he ends up finally giving in and bringing in 17yo!Marty to help him fix that aspect? All the while hoping that he could impart a lesson or two on Marty so that he could correct his own behavior unconsciously and fix his shitty future?